Time and the Rani

Is there anything good that one can say about the seventh Doctor's debut season on television? After the excellent Colin Baker's performance the show took a decided nose dive for the worse. Reasons why I hated it, in no particular order, are:

1/ That music! That godawful incidental music that they used! It is useless to describe this music in written words but anyone who saw these episodes on television will doubtless remember it. It was so bad! If it had just been used in Time and the Rani, but every story from then on had the same cringe-inducing din.

2/ There were now only four stories per season, and most of these only ran to three episodes.

3/ Those guest actors! Only Sylvester McCoy would be pathetically proud to have Richard O'Brien and Ken Dodd on Dr Who. This is supposed to be a serious sci-fi show not a pantomime performance, and these actors were totally inappropriate.

4/ The Doctor's initial persona was a bit wet and wishy-washy. I understand that in later seasons the Seventh Doctor becomes a darker, more mysterious character, but alas! His debut season was enough to put me off for life.

But back to Time and the Rani. It wasn't all bad; I particularly liked the Seventh Doctor floundering around in the too big costume of the Sixth Doctor at the beginning. A nice bit of continuity there. And I (at first) liked him being so different. As Mel says, his hair...size...voice...face...everything was just so totally different about this new Doctor's appearance. The Rani was nicely evil, but could she really be that much of a threat to the pacifist Lakertyns? The dreadful music...oh, I've already mentioned that.

I'm trying to think of a good way to close this...ah! Pip and Jane Baker's scripts are always a joy, even in a dreadful story the characters have such good throwaway lines. There!